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General Maximus · 03-09-2016, 21:25

Keep It Simple Stupid. Pre-shub i imagine 60% of the calls going in to tech support for service outages were actually nothing to do with the VM side of things (with the wan connection being up and ok) and were either caused by 3rd party routers or the device trying to access the internet. Just think how many must sill ring up now complaining that there connection is down when instead it is just poor wifi signal or a dodgy setting somewhere. There is no way you support and troubleshoot every router with all their different gui's and all the different pcs and laptops out there with all the different OS'. You can't force everyone to use the same model of pc but you can force them to use one router but even then you are still leaving yourself open to potential problems out of your control such as dns issues which is why they force you to use VM dns. At least they know when there is an issue with their dns servers and can remove one more troubleshooting step. Unfortunately that results in a single point of failure and can backfire on you as we have seen many a time before. That is also why when you ring about anything, the very first thing they do is ask you to disconnect your pc from your router and directly connect it to the shub. It is all about process of elimination and being able to reduce the number of troubleshooting steps.
You can also look as it from the opposite point of view as well. The majority of users who want to use their own dns servers and do more intermediate/advanced stuff are people who can troubleshoot their own connections and work out what is wrong anyway and won't be the customers who ring tech support. The people who ring tech support are going to be novices and if you start asking them to check the wireless adapter settings in windows and log in to their router and go to the wifi settings and see what channel they are on then you are asking for a whole lot of pain. The customer will draw a blank and expect you to be able to tell them how to do it because "you know more than me about these things than I do" so the best thing VM can do from an efficiency point of view and customer service is to provide the equipment themselves so that they can familiarise their staff in every aspect of it. Like I said though, putting cost aside, dns, print servers and networked storage etc just causes more problems because you are introducing 3rd party hardware into the equation again.

03-09-2016, 21:25	#8
General Maximus cf.mega poster Join Date: Nov 2008 Location: Lincoln Services: phone + 1gbit BB + SkyQ Posts: 11,021	Re: Ddns service on superhub 3 Keep It Simple Stupid. Pre-shub i imagine 60% of the calls going in to tech support for service outages were actually nothing to do with the VM side of things (with the wan connection being up and ok) and were either caused by 3rd party routers or the device trying to access the internet. Just think how many must sill ring up now complaining that there connection is down when instead it is just poor wifi signal or a dodgy setting somewhere. There is no way you support and troubleshoot every router with all their different gui's and all the different pcs and laptops out there with all the different OS'. You can't force everyone to use the same model of pc but you can force them to use one router but even then you are still leaving yourself open to potential problems out of your control such as dns issues which is why they force you to use VM dns. At least they know when there is an issue with their dns servers and can remove one more troubleshooting step. Unfortunately that results in a single point of failure and can backfire on you as we have seen many a time before. That is also why when you ring about anything, the very first thing they do is ask you to disconnect your pc from your router and directly connect it to the shub. It is all about process of elimination and being able to reduce the number of troubleshooting steps. You can also look as it from the opposite point of view as well. The majority of users who want to use their own dns servers and do more intermediate/advanced stuff are people who can troubleshoot their own connections and work out what is wrong anyway and won't be the customers who ring tech support. The people who ring tech support are going to be novices and if you start asking them to check the wireless adapter settings in windows and log in to their router and go to the wifi settings and see what channel they are on then you are asking for a whole lot of pain. The customer will draw a blank and expect you to be able to tell them how to do it because "you know more than me about these things than I do" so the best thing VM can do from an efficiency point of view and customer service is to provide the equipment themselves so that they can familiarise their staff in every aspect of it. Like I said though, putting cost aside, dns, print servers and networked storage etc just causes more problems because you are introducing 3rd party hardware into the equation again. Last edited by General Maximus; 03-09-2016 at 21:37.